This Is NOT A Zoe Quinn/Nathan Grayson Article: Done With The ‘Quinnspiracy’

I mentioned on my Twitter page about how I was dreading this article. I’ve actually been putting it off for sometime just because it was so distasteful to me.

As of the writing of this, there is not a single person I can think of that has commented on the so-called “Quinnspiracy” that has not come under fire from the community and/or made themselves look like fools unintentionally; from people that I could easily forget otherwise to Op/Ed writers that I actually respect.

I wanted to avoid commenting on the endless stories about how game developer Zoe Quinn and current Kotaku writer Nathan Grayson performed sexual favors for each other to mutually further their careers for fear that I would get dragged down in to the mire of (alleged) discredited journalism along with so many others by the people that the internet has labeled as “Social Justice Warriors.”

Sadly, I can’t deny that this is a topic in several of my wheel-houses meaning that I would have to comment on it eventually. So, to that end, here are my well researched thoughts on the matter…

… I DON’T CARE ANYMORE.

I don’t care that Quinn and Grayson have potentially ruined their careers by engaging in professional misconduct.

I don’t care how many or which names in the gaming and games journalism communities are clamoring to their defense or assault.

I don’t care what sort of insane conspiracy theories people are coming up with.

I don’t care that the SJW’s are making themselves look like braying asses over something that should have been resolved weeks ago and are trying way too hard to pick fights with anyone that disagrees with them.

Here’s the deal; on a professional level, what Quinn and Grayson did was wrong and no professional from any field would argue that. But, in a sane universe, the issue would have stopped at the two simply losing face and credibility in their respective fields.

Instead, the act of social media outlets and other gaming news sites self-censoring the story out of various fears generated an even bigger media buzz that allowed conspiracy theorists and moral guardians to run rampant and spread needless panic through the internet.

All that this talk of conspiracy has succeeded in doing is allow the undue – and in many cases, unwanted – attention of others that proceed to hound people that, regardless of what (if anything) they did wrong, don’t deserve to be bullied by a mob of irrational, knee-jerk, hate mongers.

Know Your Meme called this hot mess an example of the “Streisand Effect,” but I think it’s more closely related to the “Everybody’s An A-Hole Effect.” And when I say, “everybody’s an a-hole,” I include myself in that assessment. Yes, I’m an a-hole for caving in and giving this five-cent media circus even more undeserved attention and perpetuating even more ignorance and bile from both sides.

If there is any lesson to be learned from this, it’s the lesson I learned back in my college crisis management course: covering up and censoring your failures will only ensure that the problem will get blown out of proportion when it inevitably goes public. It’s better for everyone to know that you screwed up and for you to address the problem outright.

Now, somebody give me a happy story to write next week before I have an aneurysm that kills the part of my brain that restricts violent outbursts and I castrate someone with an olive fork!